This invention relates to a wideband ranging system.
Many applications in signal processing require searching for a signal in a received waveform. For example, in network localization and radar applications, the detection and arrival time estimation of a probe signal that propagates from a wireless source through the wireless medium is crucial to estimate the range between a receiver and a target object. In this case, the range is determined by searching for the transmitted signal in the received signal. The time-of-arrival is determined from the first received signal sample that contains the transmitted signal modified by the wireless channel.
Some approaches to ranging using time-of-arrival (TOA) apply a fixed threshold to energy of a received signal in various time bins. However, because of propagation characteristics (e.g., an environment-dependent propagation power exponent) in cluttered and multipath environments, use of a fixed threshold or use of energy as the quantity for detection may not provide adequate ranging performance.